Lost/obsessions moving nowhere?

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Sounds like it might be time for a new obsession. Obviously I can't tell you what it's going to be.

When you're starting out on something new, every direction is a new path to explore.

Anything you've been wondering about somewhere in the back of your mind?

I find that when I'm wandering around wikipedia, there's all kinds of things that catch my attention.

Have fun.

Sorry for double posting, but something I wanted to add.

Normal people don't understand this at all, but we've got a drive, like a hunger, a need for this stuff, like we have a need for air, and when it isn't getting filled, it leaves you with a deep painful emptiness.

There ain't no limit on number of obsessions per customer, and they have a life of their own inside of us. You can always set one down and come back to it later, anytime you want. I've done that lots of times.

So go find a new one and get your brain doing what it was designed to do. You know how much you love it.

Thanks so much CanyonWind, that was really helpfull. I think im gonna go browse wikipedia, i just remembered there are still a lot of myths/legends to explore, and ive been into those since i was a kid. I NEED to research stuff or i just dont function right. Anything is better than this hole im feeling right now.

Thanks again for very helpfull tips

I have an obsession that I have put many thousands into, especially in the last 10 years. Because I have a collection that is functionally complete with lots of redundancy I am focusing on just keeping what I have so I can afford to travel. I want to travel to New Zealand, Indonesia and go to Katmai in Alaska. While I am saving for those I want to see Lassen again since I have a relative locked up in Susanville anyway.

I'd forgotten how much this is part of AS. It is so wonderful to read others talking about it again.

My hugest one for the last 16 years is food, its impact on mental and physical health, and ultimately on the whole of society. I get bored or stale or stuck with this from time to time, sometimes for ages, and in those gaps been fascinated other things including the role of language, its relationship with religion, psychology, etc, etc, etc, aswell as "SG1", NCIS, and CSI TV series, and similarly "superficial" but curiously satisfying things ( like Lego Bionicle toys ) !

Recently two "discoveries", about free will being illusion, ( that one took me a stupidly long time to get, from my first exposure to the idea of determinism 20 years ago ), and how hypothyroidism produces some symptoms similar to AS, aswell as language as an independent organism hosted by our brains, etc have brought me to a standstill.

I think what happens sometimes is that information gleaned/gathered/hunted ( which is ancient human behaviour, just we don't do it in the fields and forests anymore but in books and on the internet ), creates a new picture, a new landscape, with different horizons to head towards, which takes time to construct. Sometimes this just takes a couple of days, before see the new path to follow, sometimes, I have discovered, if it is something major, it can take months or even years before one sees where the path is.

And yes, I get that "lost" feeling too. A slack confused period after the fire and flow and single-mindedness. Nowhere to go. I read somewhere not long ago in the context of language, how neuronal activity when making connections is like ants foraging; they set out at hazard, and until they "find something" it is "random" behaviour. So right now my neurones are "running" around with no food source detected. In fact I think sometimes radical new discoveries are like stamping on an established ant-motorway; it completely throws them. "The food source is somewhere else, guys!"

So, yes, I suppose, like Canyon Wind says, aimless/random reading/looking ... the ants exploring in any direction until hit a new source, because don't know how long important new info recently gathered might take to lead off somewhere else.

ouinon, since France is famous for Artists and Art Museums perhaps you should visit a Museum. I say this because I got a one year membership in the DeYoung Museum of Fine Arts in San Francisco and I have a new obsession with a painting called "Portrait of Miss D" by William Merritt Chase that was done in 1900. It's a beautiful work, I know you have good stuff in the land of Renoir and Monet.

If I lived in Paris perhaps. But in the provinces galleries are full of depressingly ... provincial stuff, though there are obviously exceptions.

However I fairly regularly get into an artist, get books full of their work out of library etc. Latest was Piranesi who drew imaginary prisons, and before that Chirico, Holbein, self-portraits through the ages, Picasso, Mayan art, etc.

Thanks for the suggestion though.

And am just remembering that provincial museums can actually be worth a couple of visits; in Nimes and Marseille for instance we ( my son and I) used to go every few weeks. I enjoyed the history.

Thanks so much everyone, ill look through everything i can on wiki, and do a lot of reading

I love reading, so thats not exactly hard. Too bad there arent many museums around here... I live in a very small town so not much to see im afraid. If i could, id travel to the capitol, but i cant so ill just stay here and read. Sounds nice, and im looking forward to it already

Oh I so relate to everything you've said samantca. I have driven others crazy with obsessions, when I got older I learned to reign them back to the point I'm afraid to even mention an obsession in front of someone - even if that person shares the interest with me!

The worst is when the obsession is a person...has anyone else had that? My current one is my aerobics instructor. I'm obsessed with her and everyone knows I am...I think including her...

SHELBY BE CAREFUL!! !! !! !! I think I had an obsession with my Psychology teacher (going to her office daily to chat about psychology (another obsession) or just sit there like a hang out place!!) I then gravitated towards e-mailing her family joke e-mails. She later said "I crossed the teacher student line and need a Psychological Evaluation before I returned on campus." I ranted to a friend who metion something Columbine related (serial killers obsession #2!! !) and I agreed we laughed it off as a joke and HE WENT BEHIND MY BACK AND TOLD A COUNSELOR AND HER AND NOW I HAVE REGRETED IT EVER SINCE!! !! I'D GIVE ANYTHING TO DESCRIBE MY BEHAVIOR WITH HER AND TELL HER I'M SORRY!


SO I'LL REITERATE BE CAREFUL SHELBY I THINK THAT'S AN NT THING I HATE THAT THEY DON'T UNDERSTAND THE ASPECT OF OBSESSION ESPECIALLY IF IT'S TOWARDS THEM. BE CAREFUL!! !! !! !! !! !! !

Ive been obsessed with people too yeah. But none of them ever noticed. Thank god for that

Something I've noticed about how this process works with me.

A few times I've gotten absorbed in a highly specialized topic. Aspergers was one. Another time a doctor mentioned that when a salamander loses a leg, it can grow a new one, but a mammal can't, and I couldn't rest or think of much else while I was trying to find out why.

I've found when I'm looking into a specialized topic, I get to a point where pretty much everything I read is the same stuff over and over, and new ideas get rarer and rarer. When I get to this point, I'm not an expert on the topic, but I pretty much know what the experts are saying to each other.

At that point I generally lose interest.

Other things I've spent time absorbed in are so vast you can spend a lifetime on them without running out of new things to learn and explore, like the evolution of life on earth.

Then there's also topics where the aesthetic thrill is so intense that I love going through the same stuff over and over. I'm that way with a couple of poets, although most poets I'm as ignorant about as Joe Sixpack. I had audio tapes of Hamlet, Macbeth, and King Lear, and I listened to them I don't know how many dozen times until I practically had them memorized, but strangely, I never had much inclination to investigate Shakespeare's other work.

I imagine that people inclined toward music feel the same way about a favorite band or a favorite composer.

I have a few guilty pleasures too, like submarine novels.

What really strikes me is that I couldn't possibly choose what I get obsessed with. It seems that there are certain boxes that when I open them, something comes out and takes me over, or like they're there inside me waiting for me to release them, like the genie waiting in the bottle.

That, and the incredible variety of things aspies get obsessed with is quite strange.

I remember learning about lichens in a class years ago. A lichen is actually two unrelated organisms that are always found together, a fungus and an algae. They need each other.

The fungus provides the algae with a place to live and its root system extracts mineral nutrients from the substrate for both of them. The algae does the photosynthesis and produces energy for both of them.

I think a similar symbiotic relationship exists between me and my obsessions. They need me to have a place to exist, and I definitely need them.

Oh yeah, that happens to me a lot. And I feel like I'm spinning my wheels reading the same thing over and over about a subject. Even different authors say the same thing only with different words. It kind've annoys me.

Oh wow zeldapsychology, that sounds terrible! What did you email her that she thought you need a psychological evaluation????

Yeah you are so right, NTs don't understand or like obsession, even if it's harmless. I've been obsessed with people before, not in a creepy or stalkerish way, I just really like them and I will hover around them like a puppy. But they don't understand and get sick of it FAST. What I tend to do now is try to be indifferent. My current obsession, Ana, knows that I love to come to her gym classes and hopefully she just thinks that I think she's a great instructor. I've started deliberately going to other people's classes while she is there, so she won't think I'm just going for her. Strangely, she gets a bit upset if I go to someone elses class! She will honestly act like her feelings are hurt. Flattering for me haha, but I have to be VERY careful not to take it as a green light to obsess over her even more!! Ana is the first of my obsessions to actually be patient and kind with me - most get irritated with me after a while. I don't want to piss her off. She's always been patient but her friend is not - at one point I was taking Ana's classes 4 days a week, and one of her friends started making comments that I'm always there.

I'll certainly take your advice zelda and be careful. I'm so sorry your obsession worked out the way it did, that must have been humiliating and you lost someone you care about. And what a shame the psychology teacher didn't try to HELP you instead of judging you, what the hell is she a psychologist for if she avoids people she thinks are crazy?????